


The Potential Perils of Tree Climbing

by maxette



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Angst, F/M, Um maybe should be warned for underage... Esme is 16 but she doesn't even kiss Carlisle so...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-27
Updated: 2012-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-10 20:23:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maxette/pseuds/maxette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one ever tells you climbing a tree might lead to love at first sight.</p>
<p>(Except me, here, in this fic. You're welcome!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Potential Perils of Tree Climbing

_February, 1911. Columbus, OH._

If Mrs. Beacham had been in labor one hour longer, Carlisle would have missed her. His assistant Otto would have set her leg and sent the Platts to the nearest inn before Carlisle even returned to his office. There would have been no reason to check on her in the morning. He sent through the wind a quiet thanks to the newly christened Barnaby Beacham for his well-timed entrance into the world. His mother got a full night’s sleep and Carlisle got a brief glimpse of Esme Platt.

“We-welcome back, sir!” Otto met him at the door and took his hat, bag and coat and bowed his way to the hat stand. Carlisle smiled. Otto was a nervous, self-conscious young man right now, but he had a good understanding of medicine and the body and in a few years, Carlisle would be able to leave Columbus safe in Otto’s capable hands. “How d-d-did it go?”

“Mother and son both happy and sleeping when I left, Doctor Kesler.” Although Carlisle would have preferred to be on a first name basis with his assistant, Otto’s upbringing wouldn’t allow him to address his superior so informally, and Carlisle thought responding in kind helped to remind him of his own authority and intelligence. “How does the hospital fare?”

Otto’s gaze drifted to the girl asleep on top of a typewriter at her desk at the front of the room. Natasha Singer, the hospital’s secretary and the lovely keeper of Otto’s heart. He sighed and watched her, his arm half-extended to catch Carlisle’s hat on a hook. 

“Otto?”

He started and flushed. “Well! Well, Dr. Cullen! We are all quite well here. It has been a quiet evening.”

“Perhaps it’s time to send Miss Singer home?”

“Yes.” Otto frowned, adjusting the hat to different positions on the top of the stand “I was—I was hesitant to disturb her.”

Carlisle chuckled. Otto was hesitant to speak to Natasha, let alone touch her, as he might have to do to wake her now. When he was quite inebriated a few months ago, Otto had confided that he was worried he’d be possessed to press her whole body to his if any part of their skin connected. It was sweet and slow as melting candy to watch their relationship evolve.

Carlisle took the initiative and said, “Miss Singer—” pressing a hand to her shoulder, when the front door burst open and a burly older man turned around, revealing a stunning young girl in his arms. 

“Oh!” Natasha said, standing and pushing her curly dark hair back into her deflated pompadour. “Hello, sir. What’s the trouble?”

“I’m Henry Platt,” the man said. “This is my daughter, Esme. We think she’s broken her leg—a young lady climbing a damn _tree_.”

Esme did not blush or look away from Carlisle, she only shrugged her shoulders and smiled at him, green eyes wide and shining. 

“Are you in p-pain, Miss Platt?” Otto said, pushing his glasses up his nose and examining her ripped-stockinged legs from a distance, out of propriety. “W-w-which leg—”

Quicker than the humans, Carlisle realized Mr. Platt was exhausted and was a few seconds from losing his hold on his daughter. Carlisle walked to them swiftly and put his arms beneath her. Esme dropped a few inches into his hold when Mr. Platt’s arms gave way.

“Gracious!” Esme chuckled through a wince as her leg was jostled. She put her arms around his neck, bringing her face close to his, her breasts against his chest. “Quick thinking, sir!”

“Excuse me, I should introduce myself,” he said, staring at Mr. Platt instead of giving in to his urge to gaze upon Esme for the rest of all time. “I’m Dr. Cullen.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Esme answered before her father could. He was forced to look at her, noticed the heat of her skin underneath her light country dress. “I think you have negated the need to shake hands.”

Oh, but he wanted to feel her hand in his. 

“I’ll just—I’ll take her in the back,” he said, caught in her gaze. Her smile slowly faded from her face, leaving her eyes dark and almost—predatory? She moved her tongue over her full bottom lip, and he noticed the incredible little indent in the center. He swallowed down the venom flooding his mouth. He had never been hungry like this. Not to bite her, just to—make her wet with his tongue. “To examine her injury,” he clarified for himself.

“Dr. Cullen—” Natasha started just as Otto said something much more softly and they looked at one another and blushed.

“Dr. Kesler and Miss Singer will make you comfortable, Mr. Platt.” Carlisle forced himself to look away from Esme and smile at her father. 

Otto asked if he could help, but Carlisle was already walking away. He deserved the half hour it would take to set the leg if he was never going to see her again. He had to leave Ohio. If this was within fifty miles of him, it would slowly drive him insane not to be with her. He realized he had been making a plan to find a new position and quickly ready Otto to take over the small hospital since the moment she came into the room.

“Where in town do you and your father live?” he asked as he laid her on the examination room bed.

“My father runs a farm in Galloway, actually.” Her tone was light, but she shivered as he gestured for her to pull up her skirts and let him take off her stockings. Her garters were white, ornamented with little roses against her buttery tanned legs. It was improper for a man to see a lady’s ankles, let alone the smooth curve of her calf, and seeing them now, even with a bone digging unusually outwards, Carlisle understood why. It invited the idea to lift her skirt up all the way. “Our local doctor, Doctor Maguire, is visiting his daughter in Maryland, so we came here.”

__ I’m glad you did. It was on the tip of his tongue, but Carlisle just smiled politely. “Do you—”

“I’m glad we did,” she said abruptly. “You seem very—capable.” Finally, she blushed and looked away from him.

“Doctor Maguire is not?”

“That’s not what—well, he _is_ ancient. He birthed my grandmother, my father, and me—ow! Gracious, that was worse than falling out of the tree, Dr. Cullen. Perhaps my initial assessment of you was false.”

He laughed. “I was snapping your bone back in place, Miss Platt. It’s a clean break and in such cases, I’ve found it easier to do it without warning.” 

“I suppose it does feel better now,” she said grudgingly and he winked at her. She licked her lips. 

He stood and said, “Try to keep your leg as still as possible,” then went to the other side of the room to cut the plaster bandages and warm a pan of water.

“There’s stunning crown molding in this room,” she called out to him. “And the ceiling dome in the front room has the most lovely detail. How is it back lit?”

“Are you interested in architecture?” Her smile was glowing. He hoped she went to Italy one day, and France, and saw the true brilliance of European design. He would not entertain the idea of taking her there. “There’s a hatch in the floor of the room above, with space for short candles. It’s a fire hazard, I think, but quite lovely. The hospital was lucky to have this building given to us. Have you seen the work of Frank Lloyd Wright?” 

“Oh! I consider him quite genius, Dr. Cullen!” She moved to bounce, then ducked her head smiling and clapped carefully to show her excitement. “I doubt Father would ever agree, but I would so love to see the Westcott House in Springfield.”

“It’s an incredible piece of art. Burton Westcott is insufferably smug about it, rightly so.”

She squealed, as he hoped she would. “You’ve been in _side_ the Westcott House?”

“You won’t think I’m so delightful when I put on the cast. You’re going to be sore and itchy for weeks.” He pressed his fingers to the damp, tender skin underneath her knee and placed her leg in a stirrup to keep it steady and off the mattress, then began wrapping the gauze base.

“Giving up on the ‘no warning’ approach now, are you?” He smirked and when he looked up at her, she was smirking back. He concentrating on putting an even coat of plaster over the gauze. “How old are you, Dr. Cullen?”

He hesitated for a moment, somehow not wanting to lie to her. “Two hundred and sixty five,” he said and cracked a smile. She rolled her eyes. “Why, do I seem old?”

She leaned back on her elbows and looked at him for a few moments. “You _look_ very young. But you seem—” She laughed, shaking her head, and wrapped her arms around her midsection. “I don’t know.”

He smudged some plaster on her nose. “You’re very perceptive, Esme. So, how old are _you_?”

“Sixteen,” she said quietly, hiding her face beneath a towel as she wiped her nose, then with more force, “I’ll be seventeen in—August.” 

He pursed his lips and said seriously, “Virtually sixteen and a half.”

She laughed. “Exactly. With the maturity of one twice that age.”

“Thirty three at heart, ay? Very impressive.” He crouched on the floor to focus on the making the cast around her foot even to walk on. “You are, you know. You’re a very impressive young woman.”

She inhaled sharply. “I—thank you, Dr. Cullen.”

There was a few minutes of silence between them, then Carlisle couldn’t help but say, “Do you have a beaux, Miss Platt?”

“Please call me Esme. You did a moment ago, Dr. Cullen—what’s your Christian name?”

He shouldn’t tell her. He should avoid intimacy at all costs. “Carlisle,” he said softly.

“Carlisle.” He’d always found his name awkward: two disconnected syllables, ending in a slur, but she made it sound like music. He saw her tongue touch her top front teeth with the “lie” sound as if in slow moving picture frames. “No, I don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Carlisle fisted his hands in the plaster to keep from touching her.

“Don’t have a beaux. I think I’ve been waiting for—” Their gazes met and she inhaled sharply. “—something.”

“Esme,” he said softly. The cast was finished; it only had to dry now. He stood up, took his supplies back across the room and washed his hands. “You’re going to meet people and do things in your like you can’t even imagine now.”

“Oh, yes.” Esme’s tone made him look back at her and she rolled her eyes at him. “A housewife in Ohio. I am dazzled at the future before me.”

Drying his hands, Carlisle walked back to her. “If you don’t want that, you won’t have that.” He wiped splashed plaster from her knee with the damp towel. “My little tree-climber, you can do whatever you wish.”

Esme sat up straight, bringing their faces inches apart. “Whatever I wish?” Her breath was hot and smelled like cinnamon and blood—a bite on the inside of her cheek. “Anything, Carlisle?”

“Well, tonight—” Closing his eyes, Carlisle forced himself away from her, busied himself with taking her leg out of the sling and setting her upright. “Tonight you should get some good rest, let your leg start healing.”

Esme laughed lightly. “Thank you, Dr. Cullen.”

After he outfitted her with a pair of crutches, Carlisle led Esme back into the real world. Mrs. Platt was sitting with her husband in the waiting room. Her parents fell upon her with coos and kisses and Carlisle walked to Otto’s side, lingering around Natasha’s desk: his temporary little family in his solitary existence. 

“Miss Platt l-looks well,” Otto said, his gaze on the nape of Natasha’s neck.

“She does—” _She looks beautiful._ “That has nothing to do with me.”

Otto laughed, perhaps mistaking his words for modesty. Carlisle walked the Platts outside and pointed them in the direction of the Great Southern Hotel—it wasn’t the closest inn, but the lobby featured stunning architectural detail and Esme would like it. He hailed a carriage cab and, as she still wasn’t used to the cast, Carlisle took hold of one of her arms and helped her into her seat. Their gazes met once more and then she was gone.

The silence was stifling inside the hospital. He missed the sound of her heartbeat. The tick-tock of the clocks was torture, every beat urging him to run after her. Carlisle focused on keeping his feet still on the ground. This was worse than resisting the bloodlust had ever been. 

Otto helped Natasha with her coat and watched her from the window, waiting for a cab, getting inside, and riding away. The moment she was out of hearing range, Carlisle took his assistant by the shoulder and gave him a careful shake.

“Otto!” he said. This was not his usual teaching method, but direct was the only option left. “Take control of your life. Tell Natasha you love her. You are a good man and a good doctor. Tell her tomorrow. And then we will plan my departure.”

“D-d-d-doctor! Dr. Cullen! What—I c-cannot—why should you—”

“You can. I must.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The basic story comes from [Stephenie Meyer herself](http://www.twilightlexicon.com/2006/03/11/personal-correspondance-1/). It deviates from her description a little... she said that he was about ready to leave Columbus anyway, but I thought it was extra romantic and sad if she made him skedaddle. And why not be extra romantic, right?
> 
> 2\. This was originally an interlude of a longer E/B-centric _Twilight_ AU called _Vesper_... which I am too embarrassed to post here on AO3. But you might have seen this in there? Um, it's doubtful.


End file.
